


Tow Rope

by Lydia (lydiabell)



Category: Here Lies the Librarian
Genre: F/F, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiabell/pseuds/Lydia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irene is home from the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tow Rope

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Melannen in the Yuletide 2007 challenge.
> 
> Many thanks to Deifire and Denzil for beta-reading.

The first letter I ever got from Irene Ridpath turned my life upside down and shook it till all the change fell out of its pockets, so I guess it should come as no surprise that her last letter did the same thing.

_My dear Eleanor,_

it began,

_I hope this letter finds you well. _

_I am chagrined that I have not managed to keep in touch with you during my recovery. Please know that you were never far from my thoughts. I plan to venture to Hoosier Grove on the eleventh of this month. I have missed it, and the library, and you. I would be delighted if we could spend some time renewing our friendship. I hope to see you soon._

_Yours most truly,  
Irene  
_

Now, I hadn't heard from Irene herself since she'd been hurt in the war. She'd sent me a few letters from France, which I carefully kept in one of the Colonel's old cigar boxes along with my letters from Jake. Then one day, I'd had a letter from Grace. I was sure that she was writing to tell me she would never be my sister-in-law. Aunt Hat had found me sitting out by Mama's grave, the unopened letter in my hand, and she'd read it first so she could break the bad news to me as gently as she could manage. But it wasn't bad news, at least not compared to what it could have been: Irene was coming home. Her ambulance had been shelled at Verdun, and her left leg was broken in a few places, but she was coming home.

Since then, I'd written Irene a few times, but this was the first time I'd heard from her. I didn't take it to heart, though: we'd been getting wounded soldiers back for a year, and I knew it could take them a long time to get all the way back home. Some of them never quite did.

I got the letter on the sixth, so I had five days to anticipate her arrival. I spent the time mending my decent dress, getting my bob re-done, and basically pacing around making Sparks nervous. By the time Irene drove up in her father's Pierce-Arrow, the old boy was so grateful to get away from me that he actually ran out to greet her.

She was thin, but not so thin as to look like she was wearing someone else's clothes. She still walked with a bit of a hitch in her gait. I guessed she always would.

She greeted me with a kiss on each cheek, which I gather is the French way. We chatted about nothing much -- she complimented my hair, and I inquired as to how the old car was still driving after all this time -- as we went around back to the grape arbor. It was sans Colonel today, which was just as well. I thought it wouldn't do to have him regaling Irene with tales of the Lawrence Massacre when she was fresh back from a massacre of her own.

I wasn't sure whether to ask about the war or not, but the matter was decided for me when we sat at the table, Irene moving carefully due to her stiff leg. "I wasn't meant to be driving the ambulance that night, you know," she said. "The assigned driver was injured, and I stepped in to take his place."

"Sounds familiar," said I. "Old Growler Kirby wasn't throwing wrenches for the Kaiser, was he?"

Irene's face seemed to almost be thinking about smiling. "You were on my mind, Eleanor, as I left the aid station and drove onto the field. You gave me strength. I thank you for that."

I squirmed a bit. I wasn't sure I wanted to be on someone's mind when said mind was driving through a field of corpses. And I hadn't done anything to deserve Irene's thanks. Still, anything that could help her come out the other side of that ordeal was fine by me.

I think Irene could see that we'd ventured onto unsteady conversational ground, because she brought the discussion around to safer matters. She asked me about my plans for the future now that I was a high school graduate. I told her about the plot that Buster Craddock and I had hatched when he came back from the war with only one good leg.

The Kirbys had, to a man, avoided service by claiming various ailments and obligations. All lies, of course, but you know the Kirbys. Well, when men started coming back missing legs and eyes and souls, the folks in town lost their patience with those who had shirked their duty. Kirby's MotorKar Kare had fallen on hard times, and Buster and I were just the ones to provide the competition they so richly deserved. Buster would manage the business end, and I would fix the cars. We even had our eye on an old granary that we were planning to convert to a garage once Buster's pension came through.

"And then," I said, "once I get enough money saved up, I plan to get myself a good car and get in on those city-to-city road races that are starting up. They don't have any rules about not allowing women yet, so they're going to have to make some if they're afraid of me."

This time, Irene got all the way to smiling. "That's my Eleanor."

"What about you?" I asked her. "Are you going to get your Ph.D.?"

And there went the smile, gone as quick as it had come. "I don't know. It doesn't seem as important anymore." She looked lost. "I think -- I think I don't want to do anything, really. Not yet. And here you have your wonderful plans, and I don't want to be a burden ..."

I did something then that I never do. I reached over and wrapped my arms around her and just held on tight.

"You put me into the race, Irene," I told her. "You let me tow you for a while now."

* * *

It was settled, then. Irene moved back out to Rubesburg, which was getting less rubelike all the time since the slab had come in. We even had a bank, and a post office of our very own where Wendell Micklemass reigned as postmaster.

Irene wasn't sure what to do with herself at first; she spent a lot of time in her room at Mrs. Abernathy's, reading and sleeping. After a while, though, she started to come out more. She even went to work in the library a couple of days a week, though she left the running of it to Lodelia and Geraldine. And she eventually did get over jumping every time she heard an engine backfire. Good thing, too, or she'd have worn herself to a nub, what with all the time she spent at the garage.

Sometimes at night she would still wake up sweating and crying and looking around at things I couldn't see, and I would hang on to her and talk to her about grease cups and carburetors and card catalogs until she knew me again.

We did other things at night too, which I won't go into here. It must have taken me five solid minutes to pick my jaw up off the ground when Irene explained to me exactly why she'd never been sweet on Jake. I soon warmed to the idea, though. I'd fooled around with boys a little in high school, but not much. Never much missed it, either. I knew how babies were made, thanks to Aunt Hat, and I didn't want any part of that. (Of course, some of that may have been down to Aunt Hat's descriptions of the deed. They sure did make me cast a worrying eye upon the Colonel for a while.) But if I'd known that girls could do _this_ with each other, I might have tried to teach Emma Taft a thing or two about cars.

One day we were in Indianapolis visiting Jake and Grace, and we heard a Mrs. Alva Stone Putnam speaking about the vote. She and a few thousand of her closest friends were planning to walk up to the Capitol building and have a lively chat with their legislators. Or at them, anyway.

I'd heard enough about politicians not to be too bothered about the franchise. I would have preferred a march to let women race at the Motor Speedway. But oh, Irene! Irene was alight like I hadn't seen her since before the war. She wasn't even deterred when Mrs. Putnam let on that the most likely result of this outing would be a night spent in the pokey. Me, I wasn't sure about this scheme of setting out to get arrested -- it seemed to me like I'd given up on that idea back in the time of Elwood and Crandall -- but the thought of Irene on her own in jail scared me a bit, so off I went to agitate for my rights. And sure enough, we got arrested, and so I finally went to jail four and a half years after first setting out to do so.

My picture was in the _Indianapolis Star_ again, if you can believe that. I can't help wondering what Mama would say if she could see me. I only hope fame doesn't ruin me.


End file.
